IBM, Intel invest $4.4 billion in NY chip tech hub

The semiconductor news of the day is that IBM, Intel, and other chipmakers are sinking a combined $4.4 billion into the state of New York for two different projects. One of the projects will see IBM and its two foundry alliance partners—Globalfoundries and Samsung—ramping up R&D in New York state by staffing up facilities to work on the 22nm and 14nm process nodes. This project represents the majority of the headline $4.4 billion number that the New York governor’s office is touting.

The IBM-led alliance is also working on a larger, industry-wide move to 450mm wafers, and that’s where rivals TSMC and Intel come in. Intel and TSMC are putting money towards the Global 450 Consortium’s efforts to transition the industry to the larger wafer size, with Intel’s money specifically going to fund R&D at Albany’s College for Nanoscale and Science Engineering.The move to 450mm wafers will boost plant productivity, as a larger number of chips per wafer means that more chips can come out of the same number of process steps.

Details aside, today’s announcement from the governor’s office is really about the creation of a kind of semiconductor research hub in New York. There’s one such hub in Boston around MIT for MEMS and other semi tech, but this would be one for microprocessor process technology. So the money, which will be matched bit a sizable investment from the state, will go toward making the New York area a kind of “Silicon Valley”, but for actual, physical silicon.